Trump & The Smoking Yawn

President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton before agreeing to meet with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign, according to three advisers to the White House briefed on the meeting and two others with knowledge of it.

The meeting was also attended by the president’s campaign chairman at the time, Paul J. Manafort, as well as by the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Mr. Manafort and Mr. Kushner recently disclosed the meeting, though not its content, in confidential government documents described to The New York Times.

The meeting — at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, two weeks after Donald J. Trumpclinched the Republican nomination — points to the central question in federal investigations of the Kremlin’s meddling in the presidential election: whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians. The accounts of the meeting represent the first public indication that at least some in the campaign were willing to accept Russian help.

Note well that this meeting was confirmed to the Times by three White House advisers briefed on it. Something big is happening.

Are you surprised? I am not. I’ve figured all along that Team Trump was guilty of something in this regard. You don’t get so cozy with a Russian made man like Paul Manafort, not if you have the ethics of Donald Trump, and not get your hands dirty in some way. The problem so far is that much of the Trump-Russia speculation in the media has gotten out ahead of the known facts. That problem is rapidly going away, and may have just done so.

Here’s the thing that dogs me, and that’s a measure of my own cynicism about Trump: I’m struggling to care about this story at this point. Me, I’ve priced this corruption into my estimation of the man. He is morally unfit to be president. By the time his presidency is over, he will have made Richard Nixon and Warren G. Harding, previously thought to be considered the two most corrupt American presidents, look like Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Green Jeans (sorry, Millennials; you have to be of a certain age to get the reference).

I guess it’s Trump fatigue. He has so lowered the bar on presidential behavior that this latest revelation comes across as just one more damn thing. I suppose this is how we all become corrupted. This morning I recall the death of outrage among Democrats and liberals regarding Bill Clinton’s defiling the Oval Office with his disgusting behavior. “How can they not take this seriously?!” I remember asking. And here we are today, with me — and I know I’m not alone — thinking that Trump is a complete sleaze, but unable to muster outrage over the fact that the son of the President of the United States met with a representative of a foreign government with the hope of receiving compromising information on his political opponent.

It’s surreal. But here we are.

Here is something that is not so much a defense of this dirty business with Trump — I cannot and will not defend it — as it is an explanation for why I find myself Gallic-shrugging over all of it these days. Trump is corrupt, no doubt about it. But there are various kinds of corruption.

Over a decade ago, in the early years of the Iraq War, a military friend of mine who is one of the most morally upright men I know told me a detailed story about moral and intellectual corruption at the highest level of the civilian leadership of this country. The corruption involved deliberate efforts to deceive the public about what was really going on with the war. Knowledge that such consequential lies were being told to the American people ate away at my friend like cancer. And within me, that story had a lot to do with why I eventually walked away from the Republican Party. More broadly, the fact that the GOP in Congress continued for years to defend the Iraq War caused me to lose faith entirely in the party of which I had long been a member.

That’s corruption. It isn’t as gross and as blatant as what we’re talking about with Trump Jr., nor is it new (:::cough, cough, Gulf of Tonkin) but it is more significant.

We could talk at length about how both Republicans and Democrats in Washington have over the last 20 years or so supported policies that have benefited Wall Street interests at the expense of the common good. I’m not sure if you can still watch it on the PBS website, but in 2009, Frontline aired an episode called “The Warning,” about how a relatively minor government regulator, back during the late 1990s, warned Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, Clinton economic adviser Larry Summers, and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, that the derivatives market threatened to crash the entire economy. They all shut her down. Didn’t want to hear it. Wall Street was making too much money (and note well, the GOP Congressional leadership was fully on board with Team Clinton in this respect). We all remember what eventually happened in 2007-08. How many bankers went to jail over it, or paid any kind of professional price? How many Washington politicians?

I don’t think many, if any, laws were broken. But that doesn’t mean the corruption did not go deep.

Again, there are various kinds of corruption. I think President Obama was personally a virtuous, admirable man. As husband and father, I’d wager that Donald Trump is not fit to touch the hem of Obama’s Dockers. Yet Obama and his administration attempted to force policies on public schools that would have permitted males in female locker rooms, and overall would have mandated observation of the gender ideology lie as if it were fact. To a lot of people, this is not corruption, it’s justice. But to many others — like me — it is profoundly corrupt, morally and intellectually, because of what it teaches about basic biological and moral reality — and in turn, how it destroys awareness of critical fundamental truths.

I’m not asking you to agree with me that this is a serious form of corruption. I am asking you to understand that for many of us, that kind of thing is a more serious and damaging form of corruption than what Trump is said to have done with the Russians.

Look, I don’t say that to defend what looks like might become a serious scandal. I am saying, though, that within the Establishment’s way of doing things, real moral and ethical corruption that has had real effects on real people has been simply the way business gets done. And nobody within that world much cares, or even sees it.

To put it more cinematically, let’s ask Michael Corleone what he thinks:

We are in a bad place in this country, and Donald Trump, Putin’s useful idiot, is more a symptom than a cause. Truly, I wish I cared more about this Russian thing. More to the point, I wish I had reason to expect more out of the Establishment that sleazy Donald Trump upended. I can’t muster much faith in American political leadership on either side. That’s a dangerous place that is to dwell in, but I can’t bring myself to believe something that I don’t think is true.

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166 Responses to Trump & The Smoking Yawn

Harding and Nixon the most corrupt presidents? Come on. You know that Harding was never accused of corruption (he was accused of having “black” blood and of loving a woman he was not married to). Like just about every other president (eg. US Grant, the most honest man ever to hold the office) he had corrupt friends and cabinet officers, and he committed the “crime” of drug use (drinking Prohibitioned alcohol) with some of them. Nixon certainly was corrupt, but his worst corruption (involving Vietnam) was a continuation of Johnson’s–and was thoroughly scrubbed from the “impeachment” investigation by Hillary Clinton, among others. No. the most corrupt Presidents were Rutherford Hayes (who bought the presidency at the price of the lives and liberties of all the former slaves in the South) and Woodrow Wilson who deceitfully plunged us into the nightmare of World War, the crime whose aftershocks still resound about us. Wilson imprisoned Americans for speaking out against the slaughter. Harding liberated all of them. Wilson and his Democrats perpetrated racial segregation throughout the federal government. Harding was racebaited. Who9 then was the corrupt one?

–> Nor to mention the secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos which was revealed in the Pentagon Papers, which led to the break-in at Daniel Elsberg’s psychiatrist’ office, which led to…

There is really nothing novel in the fact that the powerful and the wealthy will try to run things without regard for others. The difference is to what extent a Society allows them to do so, and this is the area where America is falling down.

A foreign power (Russia no less!) has corrupted the American political process so substantially as to bring the President, his election, and his party into disrepute.

The moral calculation that it is worth sacrificing all of American politics and its integrity, out of a sense of grievance over one more lost battle in the shifting tides of the culture war is nothing less than astounding.

And more than a little sad.

[NFR: Do you need a tissue? — RD]

In the same way that dumb liberals cannot do anything to rebut David Brooks’s very precise condemnation of the exclusivity of their culture, Rod cannot at all rebut Cameron’s accurate take down of his logic – that throwing the most powerful office in the world which can literally end all life on Earth in half-an-hour to a foreign geopolitical rival is similarly corrupting to letting trans/intersex people into whatever bathroom they’d prefer to go into – here. So instead each side makes a smart remark.

No, Mapache does not think that if Trump resigns, a Democrat will become president. Pence will become president.

Mapache’s point was that the leadership of the Democratic party is so detestable that they are equivalent to, or beneath, someone like Putin and their leadership would result in catastrophe on the domestic front (an area Putin probably doesn’t care about except to the very limited extent it might affect Russia) and on the foreign front. The American Democratic party leadership is illiberal, anti-American and criminal, like Putin.

“First of all, the “collusion” so far amounts to one ill advised meeting with someone who didn’t give them anything that we have no evidence Trump himself knew about. And you’re shocked that some people might be more concerned about executive orders that were actually enacted?

”

But… that’s only one small part of what we know.

We know that the Russian hacking campaign happened.
We know that the FBI is running an investigation.
We know that Trump people had sporadic contacts with various Russian operatives.
We know that both Kushner and Flynn “forgot” to report meetings on their clearance forms.
We know that Russian officials thought they could feed stuff on Clinton to Flynn.
We know that Junior, Manafort, and Kushner didn’t flinch when someone tells them they carry gifts from the Russian government.

Now, none of that amounts to proof of anything, but let me point you out to a great Lincoln quote.

“”But when we see a lot of framed timbers . . . which
we know have been gotten out at different times and places by different
workmen—Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James, for instance—and when
we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the
frame of a house . . . we find it impossible to not believe that Stephen
and Franklin and Roger and James . . . all worked upon a common
plan.”

BTW- the speech is about the Republican allegation that president Buchanan and Justice Taney colluded to deliver to make the Dred Scott decision as far-reaching as possible to end the slavery expansion debate, once and for all. Historians to this day are not sure whether that allegation was true or not.

We don’t actually know the Russian hacking campaign happened or if it did happen if it had anything to do with the Kremlin.

What happened here was sleazy, no doubt. Sorry but I also have absolutely no doubt that had Clinton received the same invitation she would have (possibly done it more professionally, but honestly they were pretty bad at hiding things too) done the same.

What it isn’t is the slam dunk some people are implying it is, and had it been done by the other party everybody here would simply switch roles, and in my case I’d still be saying “there still isn’t really much evidence of collusion.”

“A foreign power (Russia no less!) has corrupted the American political process so substantially as to bring the President, his election, and his party into disrepute.”

Then

“In the same way that dumb liberals cannot do anything to rebut David Brooks’s very precise condemnation of the exclusivity of their culture, Rod cannot at all rebut Cameron’s accurate take down of his logic – ”

The corruption and lies of the warmongering Democratic Party was revealed to all the world – there is no logic or truth to either of the above.

“We don’t actually know the Russian hacking campaign happened or if it did happen if it had anything to do with the Kremlin.
”

Well, in the end, this is a key disagreement here: I accept the IC consensus, which is accepted by every single Trump cabinet level nominee and Republican Senator. If that consensus is wrong, and no hacking took place, then yes, my logical supposition falls apart. However, if it the consensus is correct, it stands quite nicely.

“What happened here was sleazy, no doubt. Sorry but I also have absolutely no doubt that had Clinton received the same invitation she would have (possibly done it more professionally, but honestly they were pretty bad at hiding things too) done the same.
”

Again, if what the Trump jr. meeting is the only thing that happened, you are probably correct -and Dems would have done the same, albeit in a far less stupid manner. However, at this point to accept that the meeting was the only Russian-involved thing that happened in summer-fall 2016 requires some very heroic assumptions (namely, you have to believe that a whole bunch of spy agencies are lying, that none of their Republican employees did anything about it, and that Trump’s nominees to the same agencies chose to perpetuate the lies for some obscure reason).

One thing nobody has shown is that the outcome of the election was actually swayed, let along hacked. I work at a polling station, and it would be very difficult to hack election totals, precisely because we are so decentralized, and, because there really are a lot of layers of oversight.

Of course there is always the possibility of a digital varation on the old Chicago ward boss “this pencil Louie” where the totals are simply edited. But at the polling station where I work, hackers don’t have access until after the polls close, there is a paper trail that is not digital, there is a thumb drive that can be checked against the database downtown, which is kept in a separate envelope…

Nor, I think, did anyone disposed to vote for Trump need to see any “new dirt” on Hillary, nor was anyone disposed to vote for Hillary likely to be swayed by “new revelations” about how corrupt she is.

What is a legitimate issue is the sleazy, lying, manipulative approach to governance of a man who sits in the chair of the President of the United States, and his prioritizing personal loyalty over law.

“…attempted to force policies on public schools that would have permitted males in female locker rooms, and overall would have mandated observation of the gender ideology lie as if it were fact.” It’s hard to believe someone who calls himself Christian could write a sentence so divorced from the reality of actual people’s suffering and lived experience.

First of all you really should read Scott Ritter’s article on the site. That consensus was overrated. Anyway, the consensus was also that Saddam had WMDs and that Iraq would be a cakewalk. The consensus didn’t anticipate the fall of the Soviet Union. I called all of those things right. Color me unimpressed with the agencies.

Second of all I didn’t say there was no hacking, I said we don’t know if it was Russian, and even if it was, we have no way of knowing if the Kremlin was involved. (For example a majority of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi, but they weren’t working for the Saudi government that we know of) There is still absolutely zero evidence that Trump was involved.

Re: Harding and Nixon the most corrupt presidents? Come on. You know that Harding was never accused of corruption (he was accused of having “black” blood and of loving a woman he was not married to).

FWIW, a granddaughter of Nan Britton was genetically tested a few years back against a legitimate Harding descendant and, yep, they are kin.
It was Nan Britton’s tell-all book after Harding died that blew the lid on that scandal. The naive woman had actually gone to Florence Harding seeking financial help after sugar daddy’s funding ceased with him as if expecting that world-class battleaxe to welcome her husband’s mistress into the fold. So it came down to publish or perish for her and her love child. Odd fact: Ms. Britton lived to a considerable old age, and only departed this vale of tears in 1991.

For God’s sake, Rod, get a grip. Some people close to Trump met with some people from Russia. So what? That doesn’t prove anything and any sane judge will throw you out for insulting the court with such “evidence”. But you think that it does, because you have already became accustomed to hearing “Russians” in a negative way and because constant repeating made you emotionally ready and willing to accept anything accusing Trump in the misdeed, if there will be a pretext to do so. Well, now you have it.

[NFR: It’s like you don’t even know that I’m Russian Orthodox, and things Russian generally have a positive meaning to me. But keep it up, anonymous reader posting from a .ru account. — RD]

This is new. This hasn’t happened before. And collectively shrugging this off will have dire consequences not just for us, but for future generations of Americans, including your children. I know you feel that you’re being persecuted (I happen to disagree), but right now, you’re secure in the knowledge that no one will jail you or outright kill you for voicing a dissenting view. Because we still have a free press, you can write books, your blog, social media posts, and whatever you want. That could change. Putin would love to see the United States become an authoritarian kleptocracy, as Russia and so many other countries are. Whatever past our mistakes and flaws, we’ve been able to right ourselves and make progress eventually using the rule of law and our democratic traditions. For all of us to just shrug and normalize this would be a terrible mistake, and I’m not sure we could rebound.

I know that this sounds melodramatic, but I happen to believe that American ideals are under threat, and that a wannabe authoritarian in power is a national emergency on the order of Pearl Harbor. You’ve mentioned many instances of corruption in our era. FDR wasn’t perfect – he tried to pack the courts; he interned Americans of Japanese descent; and the New Deal quite deliberately excluded African Americans in order to secure support from Southern legislators. I’m still glad he was the guy in power during World War II and the Depression. Where would we be otherwise?

“Have you ever heard of a campaign that wouldn’t meet with *anybody* who credibly claimed to have useful information about an opponent? I haven’t. Such a campaign — one that refused — would be betraying its supporters, and, depending on what the information was, perhaps even its country.

It is admittedly unusual for the such important campaign people to be meeting right at the campaign’s centre. When Ted Kennedy offered to work with Andrupov to defeat Ronald Reagan, he used intermediaries and covered his tracks well.”

Republican political pros have said repeatedly that no, this is not business as usual, and to a man and woman, they’d have called the FBI if placed in the same situation. Stuart Stevens, Romney’s campaign manager and a veteran of many campaigns, was the first one to point out that in 2000, when the Gore campaign received Bush’s debate prep material, they immediately called the FBI.

Also, I’ve never heard of this alleged Kennedy collusion with Andropov. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but could you please point me to your source?

And by the way, Nixon’s 1968 contacts with North Vietnamese, sabotaging the peace talks then underway, were in my view treasonous.